“Have you heard anything lately?” the Stilt Walker asked excitedly, as he perched on his tall stilts. “They say that Wanli Temple and Weeping Grave Mound—all those places have disappeared.”
His colleague, wrapped tightly from head to toe, stared straight ahead without responding.
“What a shame. I was thinking of going to take a look one of these days.”
“...”
A pigeon flew down. The Stilt Walker untied the bamboo tube tied to its leg and released the bird. After reading the note, he chuckled again. “Wow, interesting. Someone’s wiped out the White Bone Tower. Any newcomers making a name for themselves lately?”
“...”
“Even though you don’t talk much, I still like having you as my partner.”
“Excuse me, seniors—are you talking about the White Bone Tower?” a young man with a scholarly air turned around to ask.
“Yes, that’s the territory of the Nine-Headed Old Monster. That guy was pure evil, terrorizing the whole region,” the Stilt Walker said, happy that someone was finally willing to talk to him. “Young Master Zhou Lian, your teacher must have told you about him, right?”
Zhou Lian nodded. “My teacher specifically warned me to avoid conflicts with these rogue cultivators whenever possible.”
“Your teacher is right. Those creatures are less human than beasts. I’m curious who managed to take down that old fiend.”
“Whoever it was, killing is wrong. They should have handed him over to the Imperial Observatory for judgment,” Zhou Lian said.
At these words, even the other observer from the Imperial Observatory paused.
Seeing the Stilt Walker’s strange expression, Zhou Lian asked, “Senior, am I wrong?”
“Right, right, right! You’re absolutely right! How could you be wrong?” The Stilt Walker took a deep breath and muttered under his breath, “How did a family as impressive as Grand Preceptor Zhou’s end up with such a fool?”
His colleague shot him a glare. “Keep quiet and get moving. We’ll reach the Huai River in half a day.”
“The heavens have their cycles. Those who do evil will be punished by heaven...” Zhou Lian continued, warming to his theme.
The Stilt Walker muttered again, “Evil earns heaven’s punishment? Then why hasn’t your Grand Preceptor been struck by lightning yet... Ow! Why’d you kick me?”
Meeting his partner’s piercing gaze, he fell silent.
But now he understood exactly how Zhou Lian had fallen into someone’s trap—pure stupidity! If the pressure from above hadn’t been so intense, he would have waited until the fool was dead before bothering to help.
—
“You just want these souls, right? Let me go, and I’ll give you all of them,” said the man with withered arms, staring at the figure before him. He had underestimated the boy.
Fang Zhiyi grinned. Behind him, several black shadows howled and darted about.
“Are you crazy? If I kill you, they’re mine anyway.”
“You—you’ll be punished for this!!!”
“We’ll worry about that when it happens.”
With a single sword thrust, silence fell.
Fang Zhiyi watched the black sword absorb the souls and muttered to himself, “Should be enough now...”
He glanced at Xiaoxiaohei, who hadn’t spoken in a long time, and then added, “To be safe, I should level up a bit more.”
He turned and left the stinking cave.
—
Xu Xiaoya had never imagined she’d get stuck with an idiot.
It all started when she was exorcising evil spirits for a client and saw a scholar giving alms to a few beggars. The beggars, becoming greedy when they saw his money bag, stole it. Remembering how she once lived the same way, Xu Xiaoya sent Gao Mingzhi after them in pursuit.
Gao Mingzhi had no mind of his own—only an endless hunger for feeding. Since joining Xu Xiaoya, he’d rarely had enough to eat. Facing a few terrified beggars, he naturally showed no mercy.
But when the scholar chased after them, he ended up protecting the very beggars instead. He carried many talismans and magical tools. Sensing Gao Mingzhi’s unstable state, Xu Xiaoya quickly recalled him.
Unfortunately, that allowed Zhou Lian to track her via the lingering energy.
First, he scolded her for raising a vengeful spirit; then came endless lectures.
Xu Xiaoya, annoyed, simply went home. But Zhou Lian clung to her like a stubborn leech, waiting outside her door.
“Miss Xu, you’re so young. Why can’t you practice enlightened arts properly? Why must you rely on a dark spirit to make a living off trickery?”
Xu Xiaoya wanted to curse at him. When had she ever been a swindler?
What made it worse: every time she tried to perform exorcisms for others, Zhou Lian showed up.
He put on a show of concern for her well-being, but all he did was sabotage her work.
Xu Xiaoya grew furious. After one of his interruptions nearly cost a client’s son his life, she snapped. She went to the Huang family to beg for a way to get rid of Zhou Lian.
But the Huang family investigated and found that Zhou Lian had massive backing. They themselves were nothing in his eyes.
With no way out, Xu Xiaoya decided on her own solution.
“You won’t leave? Then I will.”
She took the children and fled the courtyard that very night.
But fate seemed determined to torment her. Wherever she went, she kept running into Zhou Lian. Once, she might have been moved by his earnest arguments—but not anymore. Now she saw everyone with suspicion.
In her eyes, Zhou Lian was a textbook hypocrite.
When others were plagued by evil spirits, he’d say things like “Evil begets evil; heaven’s justice takes its course.”
But once, when a noblewoman was kidnapped by a demonic cultivator who stole her soul, Xu Xiaoya knew it was beyond her capabilities—then Zhou Lian showed up. It turned out the victim was his distant relative.
That day, Xu Xiaoya saw rare urgency in him. He abandoned all his own principled speeches, summoned help from the Imperial Observatory, and struck down the demonic cultivator, obliterating his soul completely.
That was when Xu Xiaoya finally saw his true colors.
“No wonder he’d always lecture others with that ‘righteous evil comes to justice’ talk—until the knife was at his own throat!”
Sickened, she turned and left. She bought a carriage and wandered with the children, her only goal to find a way to cure them of their affliction.
With Gao Mingzhi under her control, she was no longer as timid as before.
“Sister Xiaoya...”
“Yes, I’m back. Let’s go.” Xu Xiaoya grabbed the reins. Hardship had forced her to learn; she’d become a decent driver.
“Sister Xiaoya...”
“Don’t worry. I’m fine. I just went to have a look. Remember, stay far away from that idiot Zhou Lian. Being near him spells nothing but disaster!”
“Sister Xiaoya...”
Finally, Xu Xiaoya sensed something wrong. She spun around, and the massive dark spirit leaped from the bell at her waist.
“Who’s in there! Don’t touch them!”
A hand pushed back the carriage curtain. “Oh? Quite the fierce aura you’ve got.”
Xu Xiaoya’s face went from wariness to shock—and then tears spilled out. “Gousheng!!!”
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
grated, and just when he finally managed to get into an elite academy, he discovered that he actually had a system, and the way to earn rewards was extremely ridiculous. So for the sake of rewards, he had no choice but to start acting ridiculous as well. Su Cheng: "It's nothing but system quests after all." But later, what confused Su Cheng was that while he was already quite ridiculous, he never expected those serious characters to gradually become ridiculous too. And the way they looked at him became increasingly strange... (This synopsis doesn't do it justice, please read the full story)
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
